RELATIVISM

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Knowledge, truth, and morality, the history of relativism Relativism has often been criticised as a threat to rational debate. Professor Martin Kusch and his colleagues aim to explore the historical roots of modern forms of relativism, and to determine which forms of the doctrine deserve a sympathetic reconstruction and defense The emergence of

relativism as a philosophical viewpoint was accompanied by a fair amount of criticism, with many philosophers arguing that it threatened to undermine the foundations of morality or knowledge. While relativism itself is difficult to precisely define, some core elements are clear. Consider epistemic relativism, the main focus of the Emergence of Relativism project. “It’s first commitment is to the thought that ‘epistemic judgements’ – judgements concerning the question of whether a belief qualifies as knowledge – are always relative to a set of standards or principles. Such standards or principles tell you what it takes for a belief to be knowledge (e.g. which instrument is reliable),” says Professor Martin Kusch, the Principal Investigator of the project. “The second ingredient of epistemic relativism is that there is – or could be – more than one set of standards or principles, say in different cultures or different historical periods. And the third element is the thought that none of these sets of standards is ABSOLUTELY correct. In the eyes of many critics, relativism undermines the thought that disagreements can always be resolved and decided by rational debate and discussion. “Relativism raises the spectre of us getting to a point where we just have to say; ‘well, this is right from your point of view, and this is right from mine.’ That’s the worry – that relativism undermines rational engagement with one another, and therefore also potentially undermines the pillars on which democratic societies are based,” explains Kusch. The historical thesis behind the project is that relativism as we understand it today is a child of German-speaking philosophers

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and scientists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. “We have focused on the timeperiod when you find the first inklings of this modern understanding, in people like Herder, and we have traced it through to the 1920s and ‘30s, when our modern understanding of relativism is well established,” says Kusch. But the project is not just historical: “We also investigate whether one can give a sympathetic rendering of relativism; we want to test which of its many versions might be defensible.”

trying to understand how and why, in the 19th century, certain forms of relativism emerged, and how they spread and became a matter of concern,” he explains.

Philosophical research How can one defend epistemic relativism? One important area here is the history of science. It has been argued by some relativistically-minded philosophers that it is a graveyard of epistemic standards. Scientists have often modified or dropped even their

Relativism raises the spectre of us getting to a point where we just have to say; ‘well, this is right from your point of view, and this is right from mine.’ That’s the worry – that relativism undermines

rational engagement with one another Definition and emergence The wider goal of this research is to explore the history of relativism and to develop a sympathetic rendering of the position. The problem is that there have been few such sympathetic renderings. And thus, it has been the CRITICS of relativism who have been most prominent in defining what the position actually entails. Concerning the historical side of the project, Kusch stresses that “there has been a considerable philosophical preoccupation with relativism since the end of the 19th century: yet if you go back to philosophers like Kant or Hegel two centuries ago, relativism doesn’t even feature as a distinct philosophical view. It hadn’t even been identified conceptually.” Kusch and his colleagues study the causes behind the emergence of relativism. “We’re

most cherished epistemic standards in order to make sense of processes in the natural world. “Some philosophers have been so impressed by these fundamental changes in epistemic standards, that they have come to doubt that there is ultimately but one single correct system of norms for forming beliefs about the natural world,” says Kusch. In particular, Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is central for understanding the emergence of relativistic themes in the history and philosophy of science. “Kuhn pointed out that scientific work is conducted differently in different scientific communities – and that different scientific communities use different paradigms, model achievements which they follow,” outlines Kusch. ‘Paradigm’ was of course Kuhn’s central idea. It has two meanings. One is that of a model

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